The multimedia Selig Experience opened at Miller Park on Friday, the latest and most attention-demanding measure to perpetually honor the former Brewers team owner and MLB commissioner. Putting a statue and a plaque outside the stadium were hardly enough – only a permanent shrine with state-of-the-art 3D hologram technology is a fitting tribute to Selig. After all, without him there would be no baseball in Milwaukee.
At least, that’s the central claim of Selig mythology we’re meant to believe. If not for Bud Selig, we’d all have had to learn golf or tennis since we would have nothing better to do in Milwaukee in the summer. Of course, that’s counterfactual thinking – we have no way of knowing if baseball would never have returned to Milwaukee. It may have come back by some other means. There were no MLB teams in Tampa Bay, Miami, Phoenix, or Denver at one time and now there are. There is currently talk that Portland might be suitable for an expansion team (maybe even somewhere in Mexico). Milwaukee may very well have had baseball without Selig.
However, as it happened, Selig was in fact the man who brought baseball back to Milwaukee to 1970 and for that fans are grateful. We express that gratitude by attending games, buying merchandise, and watching/listening to game broadcasts. Our gratitude helped make Selig a wealthy man. It was a win-win arrangement: Selig built a business we liked, we spent a lot of money on it, and now he lives comfortably. That should have been enough.
When the Selig Experience was announced in December, I was dubious about it since the description sounded a little too close to hero worship for my tastes. That was before I had seen it. I had the opportunity to visit the Experience on its opening night Friday. I certainly wasn’t expecting a complicated, critical treatment of its subject, and as far as Experiences go it could have been worse.
There’s a Bob Uecker-narrated, triple-screen video, which culminates in the Selig hologram making a few remarks about how happy he is to have kept baseball in Milwaukee. It’s a fine piece of technology, although one can’t help but think how macabre it will be when Selig shuffles off this mortal coil. After the video, fans walk past a replica of Selig’s 70s-era office and some items of historical interest, such as the auditors’ report from the Brewers’ first season (the team did not make a profit) and the lineup cards from the first game played at Miller Park. (See it for yourself at the official photo gallery.)
Since the video lasts about 10 minutes, there’s only so much ground that can be covered, all of which should be familiar to Brewers fans: they used to be the Seattle Pilots, they were pretty good in the 80s, a no-hitter happened at one point, and there was a big hoopla about getting Miller Park built. Indeed, a major point of emphasis in the Experience is Selig’s heroic quest to secure public financing (i.e., corporate welfare) for the construction of Miller Park. Not only does it take up a fair amount of the video’s brief run time, the “museum” display includes the pen then-Governor Tommy Thompson used to sign the bill that funded Miller Park, as well as a “Build it NOW!” placard.
The Experience thus does a fair amount of work to reinforce this specific detail of Brewers history – that if Selig hadn’t gotten corporate welfare to build Miller Park, the Brewers would have had no choice but to leave Milwaukee. That’s a nasty little myth and really ought to be challenged more often. If the state hadn’t voted to finance Miller Park and the Brewers had left, that would have been because the team owner made the choice to move rather than seek financing from private lenders. The idea that stadiums/arenas for professional sports teams can only be built with public funds is bullshit writ large.
It’s true that it’s become standard practice for politicians to hand out corporate welfare to sports teams. And you can’t blame team owners for taking public funds if they can get them just by asking (even if the asking takes a fair amount of lobbying and arm twisting, it’s cheaper than spending one’s own money). But we should all have a clear understanding that public financing is by no means a requirement for these projects. Sports team owners are very rich people – the kind of folks you’d think would be able to convince banks to lend them money, and who are in relatively strong positions to raise funds from private donors. If they would rather move the teams they own to different cities instead of doing the work to get private financing for new stadiums/arenas, they’re the assholes.
Although the environment is arguably different now, a few teams are planning to build new stadiums/arenas with private funds. The NBA’s Golden State Warriors plan to privately finance their new arena. The latest plans to build a football stadium in Los Angeles involve private financing. The renovations at Wrigley Field have been privately financed (although it should be noted the Cubs did seek a $75 million federal tax credit for the project). Maybe it’s a sign that fans are less tolerant than they were 15-20 years ago of this kind of corporate welfare, but it’s important to remember that if Selig had wanted to get private financing for Miller Park, he bloody well could have done it.
In any case, even if I have a personal gripe with the message of the Selig Experience, I’m sure plenty of fans will think it’s a fine way to kill some time when the action on the field doesn’t interest them. I do wonder how the Experience will hold up over time. Will it really continue to attract fans in three, five, or ten seasons from now? If it doesn’t, fair enough – it’s the Brewers’ money, and they can spend it however they want. No one can complain when a private business spends its own money foolishly. It’s just infuriating when politically-connected businesses spend other people’s money.
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